The secret of bilingual country Ukraine

For the centuries Ukrainian nation was suppressed and oppressed. Ukrainian language survived through tremendous genocide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QupijTjTQQ&feature=related

The Ukrainian language can be traced back to the Old East Slavic language which was used in Kievan Rus’. Perhaps the beauty of the language is that it has persisted as the main language of the country to this day – despite continual persecution from ruling powers. The most noted political interference in this regard occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when speakers of the language faced persecution. Before this, Imperial Russia had imposed two bans on the language to discourage the speaking of Ukrainian. However, the language survived due to the large number of Ukrainian people who continued to live in the country – especially in the more remote parts of Ukraine. Even during the bans, Ukrainians continued to enjoy folklore songs, kobzars and the works of various great poets.

Imperial Russia may not have been able to exterminate the Ukrainian language from the land, but they did have a strong influence on the country. Today Russian speakers make up the second largest language group in Ukraine – though they occupy a relatively small percentage when compared to those who speak Ukrainian. Other languages spoken in the country include Romanian, Polish and Hungarian, but these minority languages are spoken on a very small scale.

The worth of Ukrainian culture appears, in its most beautiful and its highest form, in the unwritten literature of the people. The philosophical feeling of the Ukrainian people finds expression in thousands and thousands of pregnant proverbs and parables, the like of which we do not find even in the most advanced nations of Europe. They reflect the great soul of the Ukrainian people and its worldly wisdom. But the national genius of the Ukrainians has risen to the greatest height in their popular poetry. Neither the Russian nor the Polish popular poetry can bear comparison with the Ukrainian. Beginning with the historical epics (dumy) and the extremely ancient and yet living songs of worship, as for example, Christmas songs (kolady), New Years’ songs (shchedrivki) , spring songs (vessilni), harvest songs (obzinkovi), down to the little songs for particular occasions (e. g. shumki, kozachki, kolomiyki) , we find in all the productions of Ukrainian popular epic and lyric poetry, a rich content and a great perfection of form. In all of it the sympathy for nature, spiritualization of nature, and a lively comprehension of her moods, is superb; in all of it we find a fantastic but warm dreaminess; in all of it we find the glorification of the loftiest and purest feelings of the human soul. A glowing love of country reveals itself to us everywhere, but particularly in innumerable Cossack songs, a heartrending longing for a glorious past, a glori- fication, altho not without criticism, of their heroes. In their love-songs we find not a trace of sexuality; not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of woman is glorified above all. Even in jesting songs, and further, even in ribald songs, there is a great deal of anacreontic grace. And, at the same time, what beauty of diction, what wonderful agreement of content and form! No one would believe that this neglected, and for so many centuries, suppressed and tormented people could scatter so many pearls of true poetic inspiration thru its unhappy land.

Reclamation of its native language was a cornerstone of Ukraine’s drive for statehood.  One of the very first things that Ukrainian nationalists did was declare Ukrainian the sole official state language.  That declaration was partly symbolic.  Russian speakers kept speaking Russian and it’s still widely considered the more prestigious language.  Many Russian speakers in Ukraine look down on Ukrainian as a peasant language.  But that’s changing, because Ukrainian is now the language of education.  Eighty percent of the nation’s schools, including universities, now use Ukrainian as the primary language of instruction.  And anthropologist Laada Bilaniuk says Ukrainian is starting to shed its humble country cousin image. In fact, it’s becoming fashionable.

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Imperial Russia may not have been able to exterminate the Ukrainian language from the land, but they did have a strong influence on the country. Today Russian speakers make up the second largest language group in Ukraine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjcO4tcobc0

Poles were suppressed too. Any country that USSR invaded they spread Russian or where they couldn’t they at least spread Cyrillic as in case with Mongolia. But no matter what Russian will remain the lingua franca in former soviet areas to be slowly replaced by English. The same is true for most former colonies. Look at Latin America, look at Africa and look at Indian subcontinent

2. SOVIET OCCUPATION

On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered Eastern Poland and the German Army withdrew to a partition line, all as part of the Nazi-Soviet pact.

“The situation in Poland at the beginning of the war in 1939 was very complicated. The Nazis occupied the western part of Poland, the Soviets invaded and occupied the eastern parts of the Polish republic, which included, of course, western Ukraine.” (Norman Davies)

The first few days of what the Soviets called the “liberation”of Western Ukraine passed in celebration. Thousands were made to assemble in the Lviv Opera Theater where so-called representatives voted unanimously to join the Soviet Union.

“Let the peoples of Western Ukraine join the great family of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!” (Maryna Perestiuk, village teacher and delegate at the Lviv Opera Theater)

“But it didn’t take long for us to realize that this was becoming an occupation which was much worse than the one before.” (VICTIM_OF_SOVIET_OCCUPATION.html”>Oleksander Hryn’ko, victim of Soviet occupation)

During less than two years of Western Ukraine’s Soviet occupation, more than ten thousand were imprisoned and executed, and over half a million were deported to concentration camps in Siberia.

“These countries were caught in the grip of an impossible dilemma. There was murder, genocide, oppression on both sides and there was no way to escape. If you fled eastwards, you’re running the gauntlet of Soviet oppression; if you fled westward, you’re running the risk of Nazi oppression.” (Norman Davies)

Ukrainians had learned to survive invasions. In an attempt to protect them in the German occupied portion of Poland, Ukrainians formed the Ukrainian Central Committee with Professor Volodymyr Kubijovych as its head. But the Germans allowed the Committee to perform only humanitarian work. It had no political or governing authority.

In spite of these limitations, Ukrainians followed their own agenda. The OUN and the Government-in-Exile started making preparations for an armed struggle to gain independence.

On April 15, 1940, the Government-in-Exile issued a declaration in Paris supporting the side of “France and England in this war” and called on Ukrainians everywhere to join in the struggle against “both imperialism – Russian and German, Soviet and Nazi…”

But soon the Soviet Union – partner of Nazi Germany – would switch sides and become a partner of the Western Allies, and the hope of Allied support for Ukrainian independence would be dashed.

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When the Germans occupied Kyiv in September 1941 they found it one vast booby trap. The Soviet military had planted more that 10,000 mines and began detonating remote-controlled explosives placed in hotels, the central post office, broadcasting center – even historic landmarks, including an 11th century church.

But the crowning brutality of the Soviet regime was revealed when the Germans opened up the prisons throughout Ukraine.

“The retreating Soviets, the KGB as we now call it, the NKVD at the time, killed a lot of prisoners whenever they left, and these prisoners included some Zionists, a great many Ukrainian nationalists, and a lot of people who were picked up just for being prominent and not cooperating with the Soviets. The main prison was ankle deep in blood, the Germans reported.” (John Armstrong)

“Anyone who witnessed the sight will never forget it. Those people were truly tortured to death: tongues cut out, noses and ears cut off, women’s bodies with breasts cut off, hands and feet twisted and broken – obviously during interrogations – hands bound with barbed wire. All this was laid out, and people from nearby villages came to see these mutilated bodies and try to recognize their relatives among them.” (Serhii Pushchyk, witness from Volyn)

http://www.ucrdc.org/Film-Hitler_annotated.html

Invadors are not liberators

4. NAZI OCCUPATION

Nazi Germany moved in with a plan: Ukraine would be split 5 ways: the largest territory became Reichskommissariat Ukraine; the eastern edge came under military rule; Western Ukraine became part of the Generalgouvernement; Romania occupied the Odessa region and Hungary continued to occupy Carpatho-Ukraine.

The Germans established 160 major concentration camps in Ukraine alone.

In his inaugural speech in September 1941 Erich Koch, appointed by Hitler to head the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, addressed his staff:

“Gentlemen, I am known as a brutal dog. That is why I was appointed Reichskommissar… Our task is to suck from Ukraine all the goods we can get hold of without consideration for feelings or property. I expect from you the utmost severity toward the native population.”

Koch was responsible for the deaths of millions of people in Ukraine by starvation and execution. Curiously, he was the only major Nazi war criminal captured but not executed.

The German Commandant of Kyiv Major-General Eberhardt ordered four hundred innocent hostages to be shot as a warning to Ukrainians to cease all resistance to the German occupation – a tactic he would repeat again and again.

Babyn Yar, a ravine near Kyiv, became a killing field. In the spring of 1942, the Mayor of Kyiv, along with OUN Melnyk activist, the newspaper editor Ivan Rohach, and the outspoken poet and head of the Writers’ Union Olena Teliha, were arrested and executed there.

A German proclamation issued in 1941 had started the tragic trek to Babyn Yar. There, in two days, the German Einsatzkommando executed 33,771 Jews. In just over two years of the Nazi occupation, more than 100,000 people were executed in Babyn Yar: Jews, Ukrainians, Gypsies and others.

As the German army advanced across Ukraine two killing units, Einsatzgruppen C and D with up to 1,000 men in each, carried out the Fuehrer’s “final solution.” As they moved through the country they murdered thousands of Jews.

The Germans organized police units from various ethnic groups and ordered them to assist the Nazis in rounding up Jews. Some former POWs, among them Ukrainians, served as concentration camp guards.

But many Ukrainians risked their lives to save Jews. One of the most prominent was Metropolitan Andry Sheptytsky, Primate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

David Kahane, Chief Rabbi of the Israeli Air Force had been a prisoner in the Jewish ghetto of Lviv.

“Sheptytsky was known as a friend of the Jews even before the war. For Passover he sent to the poor Jewish families flour, food, gifts to children… In days of great holidays he always came by with an Orthodox priest and a Rabbi. When the Germans came, I ended up in a ghetto. Somehow, I was able to escape in the night. I climbed over a wire fence, and keeping out of sight of the guards, I got into the Jesuit Garden and came to the gates of St. George’s. I knocked and was let in. Metropolitan Sheptytsky hid me in his library. For several weeks, I lived behind the bookcases… Then the Metropolitan led me to the Studite monastery. At that time, I didn’t know they saved Jewish children in the convents, among them my two year old daughter.” (Rabbi David Kahane)

The first rescue operation took place on the night of August 14, 1942 when 140 Jewish children were smuggled out of the ghetto and hidden in Ukrainian Catholic monasteries and convents. Priests, nuns, and monks risked torture and death as they played a deadly game of outwitting the Nazis.

600,000 Ukrainian Jews perished in the Holocaust, but many Jews survived, saved by fellow Ukrainians who risked death if discovered. The Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Israel ranks Ukraine fourth out of 33 countries in the number of Righteous who saved Jews from the Holocaust.

In January, 1942, Hitler toured Ukraine. “Ukrainians,” he said “should be given only the crudest kind of education necessary for communication between themselves and their German masters.”

After his Fuehrer’s visit, Erich Koch announced:

“I expect the General Commissars to close all schools and colleges with students over fifteen years of age and send all teachers and students… to Germany to work.”

“Go to beautiful Germany! The first train will leave for Germany January 28, 1942. Hot meals served!” (Kyiv newspaper advertisement)

The first train was full of volunteers, fleeing near-famine conditions in Kyiv. But as the truth got out about the slave labor working conditions in Germany, people stopped coming. The Nazis began rounding them up by force.

“People would come to market in Kovel. Then the soldiers would surround them, and whoever they caught would be shipped off to Germany. My brother was taken and labored in Germany until 1945.” (Serhii Pushchyk, witness from Volyn)

“I was also taken. I was the youngest one of all, fifteen… they performed all kinds of disinfections and took us to Germany, to Karlsruhe-Durlach to a large “Singer” factory. They had turned it into a munitions factory. That’s where I worked… We painted artillery shells. We were all yellow from the paint…” (Olha Petrenko-Kovalevsky, witness from Poltava).

Called “Ostarbeiter,” or workers from the East, and wearing the obligatory ”OST” patch marking them as sub-humans, nearly two and one half million young Ukrainians became slave laborers for Germany. Many of them were worked to death. Many of those working in ammunition and weapons factories perished in Allied bombing raids.

Countless Ukrainians were imprisoned at Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck and other Nazi concentration camps. But they were not allowed to be identified as Ukrainians. They were forced to wear the “R” patch for “Russians or the “P” patch for “Poles.”

Petro Mirchuk survived Auschwitz and recounts his experiences in his book, “In the German Mills of Death”. Another survivor, artist Paladij Osynka, painted the grim picture of daily existence in Auschwitz. According to Osynka, in three months alone 15,000 Ukrainians died in the camp while only 40 survived. In total, 1.4 million people were killed in Auschwitz: 800,000 and 600,000 others including Poles and Ukrainians.

5. Soviet “liberation” for the second time.

Kiev was liberated from Nazi occupation on November 6,1943, by Soviet troops. Soon after celebrating the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, Ukraine learned that “liberation” by the Soviet Army meant a different kind of dictatorship. The post war years in Kiev were marked by intensive restoration of the damage caused during the war. The city began to dress its wounds. Politically, however, new waves of Stalinist terror again tore at the Ukrainian social fabric, with more purges, executions, and mass exiles to the Gulag. As the worst features of the Stalinist police state began to dissipate during Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s leadership, the Kremlin intensified its policy of “Russification”, barring the Ukrainian language from government, education, courts and so on, pursuant to the theory that the “Soviet peoples” would become better unified if they adopted the Russian language and culture. With so many economic and social disincentives at work, the policy itself worked amazingly well, and new habity, especially in Kiev and other large cities of central and eastern Ukraine

I’m taliking only about Ukraine NOW  because I’m Ukrainian and I will always stand for the facts.

And my aim is to learn and remember the history and I’m not mixing the facts up!

“soviets” ideology in Ukraine was to exterminate the whole nation.

Facts speak not me.